A Visit from St. Alphabet

This book is precious! Our 26 friends have never been better represented in the spirit of yuletide. Morice packs his readers into the Night Before Christmas train, and takes them on a memorable jouney from A to Z, dotting all the I's and crossing all the T's. St. Alphabet belongs in the stockings of every U and I.

Dave Morice's A Visit from St. Alphabet is a beautiful small press book that I enjoyed even though Coffee House Press now markets it as a children's book. Yes, I read it to my children and they enjoyed the alphabet play: "'Twas the night before X, when all through the Y/ Not a letter was stirring, not even an I...." Once a child learns or is learning the alphabet and has heard ""Twas the night before Christmas" they love to play with the knowledge of both in this beautiful illustrated little book. I can still remember the little darlings: "The Z's were nestled all snug in their beds,/ While visions of W's danced in their heads;/ And U in your kerchief and I in my cap..."-anyway you can picture it-actually Dave Morice pictures it. He is the artist and playful poet of Poetry Comics, a wonderful comic book anthology assault on well-known poems. Morice can draw and, as the author of The Dictionary of Wordplay and The Adventures of Dr. Alphabet (a book about fun with poetry in the schools), he loves the play of language. I am also pleased that Morice designed the book so well. The words and images sit nicely on the page and scan nicely as you flip through the pages. You can see wonderful detail in the pictures, a great aspect of a book so concerned with writing ("When out on the paper their rose such a clatter, / I sprang from my sentence to see what was the matter.") The concern with the play of poetry and writing makes this a good small press book for adults as well as children. When Coffee House Press was Toothpaste Press twenty-five years ago they printed A Visit from St. Alphabet. My wife and I found the book then, in 1980. We got another copy when Toothpaste reprinted it in 1982 and I sent one to my nephew in 1992 even though by then it was a very rare book. We are now sending one to my grandnephew since Coffee House has reprinted it. The 2005 version is brighter than ever, more durable in hardcover, and with the green endpapers, the cover illustrations, and the bright red wrapper, a much more attractive book. Actually, I am getting another one for myself as well as the new baby.